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I Built a Fire Pit, and You Can Too
19 AugI’ve decided to start blogging it up again. A lot has happened since the last post. Long story short, we bought a house near the university and got a chihuahua. Also, I built a fire pit in the back yard the first week we lived there. And I’m going to show you how to build one too for about $60!
Let’s Go!
Here’s what you’ll need:
8 Normal-ass cinder blocks
8 Flat Cinder Blocks (I got the ones with holes in the middle. They make solid ones too.)
And Optionally, 4 24″ x 24″ Concrete Pavers for that chic finished look.
Now, you should be able to figure it out on your own from here. Buuuuut I’ll break it down a bit further for ya.
First, find a nice flat spot to put your fire pit. The concrete pavers will get all wibbly-wobbly if they aren’t on a flat surface. You don’t want that.
Next, put the pavers down in a nice square formation. You can put some sand or fine gravel in the cracks between for a little more finished look. There will be some irregular spacing in there, so something to fill it in looks better. But it’s not necessary.
If the pavers are just a little wobbly, that’s OK. They’ll eventually settle under the weight of the cinder blocks and FIRE. OK, now set the first layer of cinder blocks down making a square. Center it inside the square you made with the pavers. Lay them out like in the drawing below:
See how the corners work? The one butts up against the other so there’s a square inside and a square outside.
Obviously you want to put the holes in your blocks oriented vertically, so you can’t see them from the side. I turned one of my blocks on its side to feed air to the fire. That’s probably not necessary since it isn’t that deep. The blocks are 8″ x 8″ x 16″.
Next you’ll put the flat blocks on top. Here’s the important thing: Don’t just set each flat block on top of one big block. You want each flat block to be laying across half of one big block and half of the next big block. You can see what I mean in the first picture of the finished fire pit.
You can water-seal the outside and top of the cinder blocks if you want, with Thomson’s Water Seal. They even make it in a spray-can version which would make it real easy. I didn’t do that though.
Now all you gotta do is set some shit on fire and kick back & enjoy!
cinder block fire pit in action
New addition
18 JulA couple weeks ago we added a new team member to The Dirty Loft. We usually just call her Duck Lady.
Here she is holding a bag for the etsy shop.
And here she is holding one of the first shirts we printed on the ol’ school desk screen press.
She’s a great help. Thanks to our friend Kendall for hookin it up.
Screen Printing setup!
30 Jun
Finally got the screen printing setup set up. It’s basically just hinge clamps screwed into a school desk that I bought for a dollar. Now if I was only good at drawing… Here’s more pics:
Convenient storage for ink and squeegees built right in.
We haven’t actually used it yet. Still getting the hang of coating and exposing the screens. The shirt in the photo was done without the press, and didn’t come out very well. Too bad I kinda ruined the only 2 green shirts I had 
Oh well, I’ll still wear it.
Lamp Shade Day
3 JunSo we found this epic orange lamp with no shade.
so we decided to use some vintage fabric we found to cover a lampshade for it.
Then we went out and found a nice huge lamp shade to cover. The lamp now stands 4 feet tall. I think it turned out pretty sweet:
It was available in our Etsy shop, but it sold already 
There’s another excellent orange lamp on there though.
Tags: design, diy, etsy, floral, interior, lamp, orange, shade, vintage
Why we call it the dirty loft
24 May
Three current projects, zero current living space.
One time, I took an online personality quiz and one of the questions was “which do you enjoy more?: finishing a project or starting a new project. Guess what my answer was.
ALAS,
there is progress. Casey’s current project is the vanity from the first post. After spending way too much time at Lowe’s, discovering that different sand paper is displayed in FIVE DIFFERENT PLACES IN THE STORE, and then sanding this mother, she discovered this:
…it looks neat.
Tags: dirty, furniture, organization, restoration, sand paper, sanding, vanity, wood
Sweet Wallpaper
22 MayWhat shall we use this for? I don’t know, but it’s awesome.
Tags: birds, cute, mid-century, trees, wall paper
